Stephen Fry listed as hate target on neo-Nazi website

Maurice Chittenden | Sunday, 19 June 2005 Source: The Sunday Times

STEPHEN FRY, the comedy actor, has put been on a hate list by a neo-Nazi group. The television presenter was told by researchers at Searchlight, the anti-fascist organisation, that his name had been posted on a far-right website.

Fry describes hearing of the threat in an interview in today's Sunday Times News Review. His name and details were posted on Redwatch, a website which is used by extreme right-wing groups to publicise details of their enemies.

Many of those whose names have been listed have subsequently been attacked. A teacher in West Yorkshire had his car firebombed allegedly the day after his name and address had appeared.

Fry's Jewish descent and left-leaning political views are thought to have marked him out for targeting by the right. Few people realised that he had Jewish blood until he talked of his family's history at a recent literary festival.

"They think we deserve to be taught a lesson. The Jews are regarded as clever and they don't like that," said Fry. "I was told I could get help with fitting panic buttons — Jews look after our own — but I decided against it.

"Yet the threats are real. Someone like Denis Norden (the television presenter) is for ever receiving threats. We are still witnessing the smouldering ashes of (the Holocaust)."

Fry also mentioned his ancestry in his autobiography, Moab is My Washpot, published in 1997. His mother's grandfather was a Hungarian Jew named Neumann who lived for a time in Vienna.

In the book Fry recalled that his "blood ran cold" when he read that a Hungarian Jew with the same surname had given Hitler a long black overcoat in Vienna in 1910.

Fry added that "one can't help wondering if it really might be true that one's great-grandfather might have befriended and kept warm a man who would decimate a large part of his family".

Fry, host of the BBC2 quiz show QI, visited his ancestor's grave in Slovakia last month only to find that it had been desecrated.

Gerry Gable, who runs Searchlight, said he believed that Fry's name had been put on the website in the hope that some harm would come to him. He blamed some members of the British National party and remnants of the outlawed Combat 18 terrorist group.

"They will go for anybody," said Gable. "They will put people's names on there hoping that a young person who wants to make a name for himself or an older pyscho will take action. At best it is going to be a phone call, at the worst your house will be burnt down."

Despite the threat, Fry is continuing to support opposition to the government's racial and religious hatred bill on the grounds that it attacks free speech.

Tomorrow Rowan Atkinson, his friend and fellow Blackadder star, will be joined by Ian McEwan, the novelist, Nicholas Hytner, director of the National Theatre, and MPs from all three main political parties to voice opposition to the bill in a meeting at Westminster.

Redwatch did not return e-mails asking for comment.